A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [139]
3. See The Secret Message of Jesus and Everything Must Change.
4. One of the greatest comedic movies since the big bang (in my humble opinion) is “Weird Al” Yankovic’s UHF. In it, there is a fake ad for a new movie called Gandhi II. “He’s back,” the deep voice on the trailer begins, “and this time he’s mad. No more Mr. Passive Resistance this time. He’s out to kick some butt.” The “second-coming Gandhi” wields a mean machine gun and likes to party with beautiful women (one on each arm) to boot. You can watch the clip at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3913203940475670642.
Chapter 13: Jesus Outside the Lines
1. The interview can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?=OH1yOmij7Q4.
2. One recalls the words from the novel Nellie Norton, quoted in Chapter 7: “In the catalogue of sins denounced by the Savior and His Apostles, slavery is not once mentioned…not one word is said by the prophets, apostles, or the holy Redeemer against slavery…. The Apostles admitted slaveholders and their slaves to church membership, without requiring a dissolution of the relation.” One imagines that it would be far easier for a slave owner or radio broadcaster to say these words than it would for a slave or slum dweller.
3. Thanks to Dr. John York of Lipscomb University for stimulating my thinking on the resonances between Jesus and Moses in John’s gospel.
4. Since we aren’t assuming the six-line narrative, it would be an unwarranted conclusion to equate words found in John like “condemnation,” “death,” and “perish” with the word “hell,” which is never found in John.
Chapter 14: What Is the Gospel?
1. Personal communication.
2. The Secret Message of Jesus (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2006) and Everything Must Change (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2007).
3. Although they differ in some assumptions and conclusions, the following authors all have helped me better understand the message of the kingdom of God: Martin Luther King, Jr., Steve Chalke, N. T. Wright, Dallas Willard, John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, John Howard Yoder, Ched Myers, Jacques Ellul, and William Herzog.
4. Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright has explored this theme powerfully in his work, as have John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg.
5. It’s even more ludicrous to imagine him saying, “And we’re going to eternally torture anyone who doesn’t accept this new religion named after me.”
6. This recalls what I said earlier about there being many Christianities, and it has many other implications as well, as we will explore in the ninth question.
7. I should add that I had just read N. T. Wright’s What St. Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), and I felt as many readers may feel reading this book. I found his ideas intriguing but disturbing, and I half hoped to prove him wrong. Happily, I failed to do so.
8. Dr. Ray Anderson, one of the unsung theological heroes of our time passed away as I was editing this book. He aptly described this process in his delightful book An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006).
9. Of course, we have had to deal with these kinds of issues ever since—right down to the present day, as we struggle with how to experience true racial reconciliation, true ethnic, class, and caste reconciliation, even true acceptance of gay people, hermaphrodites, and (in some settings) Democrats or Republicans.
10. It’s worth mentioning that the words “salvation” and “save” have derived a certain definition within the six-line Greco-Roman narrative, and that this definition must be reconsidered when the terms are resituated in the three-dimensional biblical narrative. Try reading “liberation” for “salvation.” Similarly, for the key term “righteous ness of God,” try substituting “restorative justice of God.” Thanks to Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat for the latter rendering of the Greek term dikiasoune theou. See Sylvia’s chapter in Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, and Ashley Bunting Seeber, eds., The Justice Project (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009), and watch for their upcoming book Romans Disarmed, a sequel to their